Hetalia Shinobi Powers  Suna
by The Laughing Phoenix
Summary: Suna is a survivor.  For her, it's practically an art form.  Inspired by Orrunan's Hetalia Shinobi Powers.


Hetalia Shinobi Powers – Suna

Summary: Suna is a survivor. For her, it's practically an art form. Inspired by Orrunan's Hetalia Shinobi Powers.

**The Laughing Phoenix** does not own either Hetalia or Naruto and makes no profit from this work. She doesn't even own the idea that spawned this: **Orrunan** gets credit for that.

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><p>The important things have a tendency to come in contrasting pairs – day and night, hot and cold, greatest and least. Life and death. Suna has time to muse on this state of affairs at night, sitting out among the desert sands: she has discovered that being the weakest of the Shinobi villages gives one a surprising amount of time to think, and tries not to feel bitter when she remembers this.<p>

Suna has known for a very long time that size does not equal power. Look at Iwa –he's ridiculously tall and remarkably strong and Konoha still manages to beat him to the ground every time he tries to take over her turf. That doesn't mean it hurts any less when Kaze no Kuni yells at her for being _weak pitiful utterly worthless_ and she has to grit her teeth and take it because he's still her Lord, and she can't shout back that of _course_ she lost because he's _crippling_ her. That doesn't mean she doesn't resent her small stature when he dismisses her, cutting cutting _cutting_ her budgets until she barely has enough to keep her clothes and roof from being full of holes.

(Her weaponry never suffers. No matter how short of funds she may be, Suna makes sure her weapons come first – everything from the snake and scorpion and spider venoms she dips her blades into to the blistering malevolence that is Shukaku where he sits trapped in her best teapot. When one is a shinobi, to neglect your weapons is to neglect your soul.)

For Suna, it is all about making it to the next day. Her once-sturdy home has patches in the walls and ceiling and she lives more or less hand to mouth, but she endures and is proud of the fact. She has no patience for Kumo's political games or Konoha's 'underneath-the-underneath': what you see is what you get, and such things are the province of those who can afford the extra energy anyway.

(Suna wonders if she sounds a little bit bitter, then shrugs it off. When it seems like all you do is lose, a little bitterness is probably justified. She did not enjoy being summoned in front of Kaze no Kuni for a reprimand, as though it were her fault her Kazekage had been kidnapped, her fault her siblings took advantage of her search to start a war.)

She envies her siblings in a lot of ways, even if she only admits it to herself on rare occasions, sitting under the full moon as she looks out over her territory. Iwa with his head like the rock he's named for and twice as stubborn, picking himself up and forging on ahead no matter what trips him. Kumo with the sly smiles and clever political streak she has to have picked up from Kaminari no Kuni, always looking for an advantage, no matter the occasional bouts of impetuousness she's prone to. Kiri with those eyes that speak of blood on the walls and bodies in the water and mad smiles in the dark. Konoha with that infuriating ability to bulldoze through anything, to come out on top no matter what is thrown at her.

All with the support of their lords behind them.

Suna can't be like them. She's no mother, no mentor, no strong charismatic leader. She can't lead her officers (few, far between, and as wary as jackals – and if Kugutsu Butai doesn't stop wandering off when she needs him she'll stomp him into the dirt, no matter that he's the strongest she's currently got) into battle. All she can do is teach her ragged little band to survive.

(It is Suna who leads her shinobi to the tiny pockets of oases in their desert. It is Suna who nurtures the instincts to imitate, to become as swift and untraceable as the wind and as harsh as the sun and as abrasive as the sands. Let flood or fire or storm rage – in the end, it is the sands that remain, once they have expended their fury.)

The decision to plant Shukaku in a new host tastes like bitter ash in Suna's mouth. It _hurt_ the first two times, having the vicious drunkard active among her people, and she's not eager to experience it again. In the end, though, she doesn't have a choice. Her clothes are more threadbare than she can ever remember them being, and only the voluminous cloaks she favors conceal just how much weight she's lost. So she stands witness when an unborn baby has a monster sealed into him and meets the mother's eyes, answering the dying woman's curse the only way she can: with a promise to keep the child alive.

At first, it's so easy. She visits at night, when the child is the only one awake in his dwelling. She hums to him, tuneless little ditties as she teaches her sands to know their charge, teaching him to know the desert almost as well as she does. She even runs her fingers through his hair before she leaves every night, never showing the pain on her face as Shukaku slices open her palms. And then the child grows, and it's harder and harder to visit, until she must restrict herself to watching from a distance because Shukaku's sunk his hooks too deep and getting too close makes her physically ill.

(Suna wishes she could be surprised when the child lashes out at her. Shukaku is poison, but what she had once hoped could be a partial cure – no matter the side effects – has become a cancer, and she is running out of time.)

It is oh so easy to listen to Oto when the boy slips across the border to visit her, bearing a proposal of alliance. Between everything that has happened to her, she is weaker than ever and barely solvent, and Suna knows that if things continue as they are she will be fighting for her life within another few years. Of her siblings, Konoha is the only one she stands any chance of taking on – both Kiri and Kumo are too far, and Iwa too strong – and with Oto's intelligence and added strength, she allows herself to believe she has a chance.

Sitting on her damaged roof in the moonlight a few weeks before her shinobi leave for the Chuunin Exam, Suna allows herself to dream. In her dreams, she and Oto break Konoha's defenses, down to her precious naginata, and the resources she seizes allow her to bolster her failing reserves. Kaze no Kuni recognizes his error and begins to return missions to her, even supplementing her funds (and it is very easy to blame Konoha for _that_ loss of respect too, as her older sister has been profiting from Kaze no Kuni's distaste for his shinobi). In later years, she will look back on this night and recognize the moment Oto slipped beyond her defenses, dealing a major blow and confusing her senses to the point that she can no longer recognize the imposter at her heart, but in this moment she dares hope that things will be better.

(When Konoha retaliates to the attack in the center of her stronghold strongly enough to put both Oto and Suna to rout, she half-expects her older sister to put her down permanently. She is stunned when Konoha lets her go and pleasantly surprised when her monster-child has his worldview turned upside down by one of Konoha's favored ones and devotes himself to repairing the damage she and hers have sustained over the years. It is a change she appreciates, no matter that the fact that she now owes Konoha yet another favor tastes sour.)

When someone else steals her Kazekage again, Suna eagerly reaches for her weapons. She's healthier than she's been in years, even if she has a long ways to go before she can challenge her siblings, and she's not going to lose another one of her strongest people without a fight. When it comes down to it, the decision to sacrifice one resource – a strong blade that served her well, coated as it was in ever-changing poisons and razor-sharp even after the battering it had taken over the years – for her monster-child is one she makes with pride, for the loss yet somehow makes her stronger.

Despite the relief at regaining her Kage, Suna can't help but feel uneasy. There's something big approaching on the horizon, something she doesn't think she can handle alone. And though she'll turn to her siblings if she has to (Konoha's been far more friendly lately, if nobody else has) Suna begins to make mental plans for riding out this most recent storm. Because if there's one thing she knows how to do, it's dig in and survive.

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><p>Credit goes to <strong>Rusting Roses<strong> for the beta and **Orrunan** for permission to extend their original work - I highly recommend it. You can find it in my favorites list.


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